Henry Progressing (OJG)

Hey everyone,

Well this is actually the second time I am writing this, thanks to the less than responsive computers we were using at a gaming Internet café. I suspect some spotty 11 year old kid thought it would be fun to “frag” my machine after 2 hours of writing. I was not a happy bunny. On the plus side, I am sure writing it a second time will make it an even better read. Ha.

So, first of all I just wanted to update a part of my last blog which stated how wonderful the library Internet access was… it is now less wonderful. I discovered the process in which new people come to use the few machines they have. Said new person turns up and asks to use the Internet, the officious Librarian takes out the diary, asks them for their name, and then slowly writes down their details into the current time slot. The Librarian then comes over to a random machine and tells the person sitting in front of it that their time is up, to which the person usually replies something like “oh, no warning, ok give me a minute to close things down”. At which point the librarian starts to get all flustered and says that the new person booked and you need to move now. Anyway, I think you get the picture, the exchange carried on for a bit longer, and I was tempted to just sign up again in the diary but thought that I had probably been there long enough.

Since my last blog entry, which I think was Thursday a week ago, Henry spent the day at the Electricians, so his spot lights now work, the inner fluorescent lights work, and he also has two new 12v sockets up front. I also got Ross the electrician to add a battery meter, which was a good thing as there might be a problem with one of the batteries, but we will find out more about that in due course.

Henry has also spent the day with Mitch at John’s Motor Trimmers, where he got a new pop-top fabric (much sturdier than the last one), some new vinyl for the bed and a new tough vinyl floor (easier to clean). Mitch will also be making seat covers for the two new seats that I will be making. Henry is looking great!

On Sunday last we went to visit Robert, Lil, and Ben who live on the edge of the Swann Valley. They have a truly beautiful house which sits on stilts overlooking a small valley. The view from their very long veranda is breathtaking (they probably thought I was a little mad as I snapped away with the camera). But… believe it or not, their view is not the most amazing thing about the house. Nope, even better than the view is the multitude of wild animals that come up right to the house. Specifically kangaroos.

So, I now have 200 or so shots of roos as they got progressively friendlier and closer to the house (now they positively knew that I was mad). If you look at some of the pics, you can see a female roo with her Joey in the pouch. There were in fact 2 females with joeys although one of the joeys seemed to be upside down in there, and it just looked weird. One thing that I noticed is that roos cannot actually walk. They can obviously jump for long distances, but for shorter distances they use their tale to prop themselves up just enough so that they can move their hind legs forward.

As well as the roos, we saw several beautiful birds flying up onto the veranda. So there we are having afternoon tea in a beautiful National Park valley, with roos below us, and parrots on the veranda. For comical value we had Gus, Ben’s puppy big puppy!), who loves nothing better than trying to find new friends by clumsily walking over to the birds with mild curiosity only to be constantly disappointed as they repeatedly fly away. At the end of the day we went for a 5 minute walk to catch a view of the Perth skyline from afar. The sky was quite hazy, but that is not the norm. Apparently it takes 45 minutes by car to get to the centre of Perth. After the walk, Ben showed me his workshop, a room under the house, the size of a very large living room with tall ceilings and a central square workbench probably 3m long on each side. I gotta get me one of those!

So speaking of workshops and tools, you probably all want to know how my own progress with Henry is coming along. Well, no wood has yet been cut, but the plans have been coming along well, some of which I have included as a picture below, so you can see what I am up to.

I have bought a significant number of tools, and to be honest I am a little embarrassed at doing so when we are supposed to be on such a tight budget, but in my defence the prices have been very good. In fact, I found the following quite funny (and hopefully so will those of you that also have a workshop full of tools). The Multi Sander cost 40GBP, the 18V Cordless Drill with Bits cost 40GBP, the Laser Guided Jigsaw cost 40GBP, and the 1550W Plunge Router with 50 bits…. yep…. cost 40GBP! Now as any of you know, the Router with bits should be several times more expensive than the little sander. It makes no sense! And all this is from GMC, a middle of the range make, there were much cheaper!

All in all I think I have spent 300GBP for all the tools, and 100GBP of that was just for the Router Table… which will suit my needs now, but will be improved at a later stage J Already the projects are building up.

So, plans are mostly done, tools are all bought, wood is mostly bought, a few fixings still need to be found, and with any luck the next 3 days or so should see a ton of wood being lovingly cut, mitred, sanded, drilled, fixed, and if all that fails, cursed at (still lovingly)!

With regards to the colours we have finally both agreed on the following scheme, although modifications have already been made… but more on that later!


Well, I think that is it for the moment, there are a lot of other things to write down, but I don’t want to turn this into a novel. As I have mentioned many times before, please leave comments, they are important to us. Also, we do try and keep the blog entries regular but with no permanent Internet access, it can be difficult.

Oly